A new preprint study posted to the medRxiv* server shows an AstraZeneca’s ChAdOx1-nCov-19 and Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine combination is immunologically superior to two AstraZeneca ChAdOx1-nCov-19 doses. Led by German researchers, the study shows that having the first dose with AstraZeneca’s ChAdOx1 and the second with Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2 elicits significantly higher anti-spike titers and more […]
Identifying markers that indicate severe COVID-19 disease trajectories could lead to early medical interventions and help reduce morbidity and mortality. In a new study posted to the bioRxiv* preprint server, a prospective cohort of patients with COVID-19 exhibited distinct features of the IgG fragment antigen-binding (Fab) and fragment crystallizable (Fc) domains, predicting two distinct disease […]
A research group from Osaka University led by Professor Hisashi Arase and consisting of researchers from the Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, the Institute for Protein Research, the Immunology Frontier Research Center, the Center for Infectious Diseases, and the Graduate School of Medicine has discovered for the first time that both neutralizing antibodies that protect […]
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), continues to spread across the globe. The virus first emerged in Wuhan City, China, in late December 2019, with scientists pointing to pangolins as intermediate hosts. Since SARS-CoV-2 is a zoonotic pathogen, it can jump from animals to humans. As […]
The ongoing outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection poses a severe threat to humanity. To date, it has caused over 146.8 million infections and 3.1 million confirmed deaths. Similarly, in the last two decades, two other highly pathogenic coronaviruses (CoVs) – SARS-CoV […]
UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists have identified the first cases of the Brazilian variant of COVID-19 infection in North Texas using next-generation sequencing technologies along with PCR testing. UT Southwestern sequencing protocols show the U.K. variant (B.1.1.7) has become dominant in North Texas – found in about 55% of sampled individuals – followed by the […]
A new study led by Hans-Martin Jäck of the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany engineered clusters of neutralizing monoclonal antibodies using a transgenic mouse model. A unique characteristic for the antibodies was the different ways it bound to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and the overall reduction in the viral spread for […]
A team of scientists recently conducted a large-scale study at Northwell Health, New York, USA, to evaluate the efficacy of neutralizing monoclonal antibody (MAB) therapies in preventing disease progression among patients with mild to moderate coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The findings reveal that the timing of initiating MAB therapy is a crucial factor in determining […]
The rollout of vaccines is on in an attempt to achieve population immunity against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). However, the recent emergence of several variants that have altered transmissibility, infectivity and virulence characteristics has cast doubt on the feasibility of this goal. A […]
The effect of different neutralizing antibodies, both vaccine-elicited and from convalescent sera, suggests new variants are emerging that can evade the human immune response. The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) binds to host cells via its spike protein, which has two parts, the S1 and S2 subunits. The S1 subunit has the receptor-binding […]
